Food for busy (or lazy) people who aren't afraid to play. I love my tools - use both Chefs Toolbox products and my trusty Thermomix. I am not into lots of fiddling about but am not afraid to experiment with flavour. Wherever possible I will include the Weight Watchers ProPoints for my recipes. My friends and family are my food critics. I would be thrilled if you shared what you think.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

This is my TM conversion of my macaroni cheese sauce I have been making for over 30 yearsIt is very popular on the TM forum - you can check the rave reviews here

Grate 180g tasty cheese on speed 8 for 5 seconds

Add:

45 g flour

50 g butter

1 tsp mustard powder

1/2 tsp salt

pinch cayenne

and 500 g milk

Cook 7 mins 90 deg speed 4. If you are making macaroni cheese you cook a pot of small pasta while this is happening

When it's cooked it looks like this

And after you mix the pasta and sauce together it looks like this.

Fun fact about mac and cheese - even the Sims can make it - this is apparently a very common recipe for Sims who have not developed their cooking skills! (or so I am told)Originally published by me in 2011 at Forum Thermomix

This was so yummy I almost forgot to grab a pic. That is a teeny tiny spoonful of Thermomix potato at the side of the plate. The salmon and veg are straight out of Jane Kennedy's wonderful OMG I can Eat That? Indulgent food minus the boombah book which you can find here (she has an app now too!). My only trick is that the asparagus is great cooked on a CT silicon sheet!

Monday, August 13, 2012

I received a kind gift of some lovely backyard free range eggs this week, so have put them aside to use in special dishes.
Tonight lots of people had to be places so we needed quick.
Menu for wo people:
3 bunches asparagus
4 eggs
1 lemon
fresh ground salt and pepper

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Well, kind of. You know I can't not fiddle with a recipe. Well some things just take longer if you don't crank up the Thermomix. And I used it to grate the parmesan so I thought while it was awake... I would just chuck all the stuff in for the rub and turbo it a couple of times. It did need a scrape down and a second go...

But then I added the honey and did the same again and when I turned the rub out on the pork fillet Taff assured me this one has a better consistency than 20 minutes banging away in the old mortar and pestle.

So anyway we rubbed it on the pork fillet (those are Taff's fingers)

And followed the instructions - popped it in with the potatoes and got on with the salad. My other deviation. I used wombuk. Because it is curly and nice and was in the fridge.

The salad is really great - balsamic glaze and olice oil instead of mixing a dressing and it is just cabbage, carrot and parmesan mixed well

Here it is in a heirloom bowl. Not my heirloom, this one was picked up at an op shop but it is a lovely bowl and just the right size for this as well as waist exploding trifles.

From this point on you people are lucky to be getting pics at all as I managed to mangle my SD card and the microscopic write protection tab is somewhere on the floor under my desk. Lucky I had an old micro SD from a phone and a reader that would go in the camera

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Because leftover chocolate chips is not a situation we haven't all had to deal with right?

I merged several (extremely useful) old style peanut butter jars and came up with this

So I thought "cake". Googled "chocolate cake thermomix" and hit this little gem

It called for dark chocolate chips, and sugar, so I used accumulated chocolate chips and brown sugar

You just put all the chocolate, sugar and butter in and cook for 5 minutes

Add flour, salt and eggs, and suddenly you have a cake ready to hit the oven! I used the CT round mold which turned the cake out a dream! I took pics but being a dingbat had left the SD card in the computer so the progress pics now only exist in my imagination. C'est la vie!

So this was all done while I watched Masterchef and did the dishes.

I am off to bed now with a very small slice of this and Offspring Series 3. It's about 12 ProPoints per slice based on 8 slices per cake.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

This is a variation on a salade nicoise I have made a few times. That recipe has a LOT of oil in it. And is for four people. So I mixed it up a bit and reduced the quantities - 3 serves for us.
Start with lovely fresh greens - tonight I used ready washed spinach and rocket, cherry tomatoes and red onion sliced real thin

Add some zing - 60 g pitted kalamata olives

Add some stuff to fill you up - a can of white beans and two eggs I hardboiled earlier in the Thermomix

Now to make the dressing - I put some thyme from the garden in the TM with a clove of garlic

Whizz 2 seconds at speed 7

Scrape down and add the following:

Juice of one lemon

1/4 teaspoon raw sugar

2 teaspoons dijon mustard

ground salt and pepper

And the secret ingredient this amazing lemon infused olive oil

whizz 5 seconds at speed 6

Arrange drained tuna steaks (springwater) on the top of the salad and give the tin to the ninja cat to enjoy. Then pour over the dressing and serve! This is so filling neither of us had bread with it tonight. It will stretch to 4 or 5 serves just add more eggs and tuna or have crusty bread with it

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

It was chilly here this morning so I planned to cook something out of the Cook Hearty book you can buy here The recipe in the book is slightly different but there is a version on the WW site here Buy the book - go on you know you want to!

I started off browning the chicken in my CT saute pan which is a gift for dishes like this. I really like lovely legs they are SO cheap and the money I save on these once a week can be used to buy the more expensive lean cuts of meat like lamb or beef eye fillets.

The recipe in the book was unclear about what sort of shallots so I bought 12 lovely sweet French eschallots to put in our coq au vin tonight

I had the most beautiful tiny potatoes but they were really tiny so I put in 16 because these were so much smaller than a normal potato. I was a bit low on normal carrots so I used two purple heirloom carrots.

This is what it looked like in the pot once all the prep was done. That's thyme from our garden on top. I didn't have any brandy so I chucked in oloroso sherry. We chose shiraz for the wine.

I turned it off, we took the kids to work and training, went to the park with the dog, and came home and switched it on again. I cut up some cabbage and microwaved it to use as a bed for the dish.

Here it is ready - absolutely beautiful colour - not all down to the wine - I think those carrots generated a lot of the colour

And it was delicious (the cabbage is hiding underneath) According to the website it is 9 WW Propoints - the book says 10, it doesn't matter that much - I'm full!